BritBox player launch

From today, BritBox will be made available to selected
devices on YouView starting with Humax Retail T2000 devices.

This is a phased release as it requires a software update to
enable it to be switched on, so some box models will receive it sooner than
others. We will update this thread when it’s made available on other box models.

BritBox is a subscription service focusing on British TV
series and films supplied by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. BritBox
will offer a wide range of popular TV shows across various categories including
Drama, Comedy, Documentary & Lifestyle, Reality & Entertainment and
Crime.

Good news when we having it on the t400 and the T2100 boxes anytime soon as I don't have to watch it on my Smart TV ? thank sarah for the good news now we know that brit box as started to roll out on youvier.

90 minutes in to White House Farm Murders (30 mins in on 2nd episode, watched back to back) it glitched, came back playing, but with no sound, unresponsive to the YouView remote - Pause, Back, Close, nothing.

And you can’t get subtitles, even when it is working ‘properly’.

I had to turn off the YouView box to regain control.

Put it on again, went back in, fast forwarded to where it stopped (roughly, as there is only a timeline, with no visual clues) and was able to watch the rest of the episode.

But there is no way it should have been released in this state

I have a low opinion of people who press the Disagree button instead of engaging in reasoned debate.

I have an even lower opinion of YouView’s continued policy of letting such people hide behind the cloak of anonymity.

Agreed, however these are strange times for everyone. I'm also shocked by the quick release of this as its nowhere near ready for public release. But better than nothing perhaps, before a possible total lockdown?

In a saturated market with Netflix prime and Now tv, " better then nothing " is hardly applicable. Apparently all 4 are adding content this month but the mystery remains why iplayer is exceptionally user friendly and Britbox simply isn't.

Yes we seem to have gone from one extreme to the other with YouView releases. I presume the thinking is that in these lockdown times having the ability to access something (not matter how rough) is better than nothing. Games have been following this path for a while with patches released to get it to what should have been a release state, some prefer some do not. I think a small middle ground needs to be found going forwards (hopefully there will be more to come) but I don’t think we should be too hard on decisions made in these unusual times.

Dont think it was rushed out. It was originally due end of 2019 on youview that then got postponed to the "2nd quarter ".Its basically a poor app in comparison to it's competitors. Stay safe everyone.

It is academic whether it was rushed out, or dribbled out.

Either way, it isn’t ready.

And while neither the BBC’s design of the iPlayer nor itv’s design of its Hub seemed to have informed the UI of this app, their combined experience in this area should have taught them how to produce something that does not crash so frequently.

Does anybody know if these woes are common to Britbox everywhere, or is it just the YouView version that is rocky?

I have a low opinion of people who press the Disagree button instead of engaging in reasoned debate.

I have an even lower opinion of YouView’s continued policy of letting such people hide behind the cloak of anonymity.

Only 2% carry on the subscription after the trial offer, so the assumption can be made it's truly woeful universally. Whether they give in because of the poor content or pathetic usability is anybody's guess.

Does anybody know if these woes are common to Britbox everywhere, or is it just the YouView version that is rocky?

The UI is pretty much the same whether you use a Web browser, YouView, or the Android app. (Sorry I have no iThingy devices, so can't comment on these)

@kodikid Just about every review of the android app is 1 star, and nearly everyone is complaining about the UI and its usabilty rather than the content, saying that they have to fast forward through previous episodes to pick up where they left off in a series because there is no method to display all the episodes.

I can sympathise with this last problem as it took me ages to discover how to display all series and all episodes, and it differs depending on how you launched the programme - Intuitive it is not!

John.

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - George S. Patton

The figure of 1.5% comes from a piece by The Mail reporting on the results of a presumably voluntary response survey conducted by Oliver & Ohlbaum associates, Strategy Advisers in the Media, Entertainment & Sports sectors. There was a similar article in The Times.

There is no indication of how the sample for the survey was chosen, or how it was conducted.

The piece includes this comment from a spokeswoman for BritBox: 'The research assertions
made about BritBox bear no resemblance to the truth - unsurprising as
they don't have access to real user data vs sample data - which we would
question.

As jonesh has helpfully said, the survey was conducted by Oliver & Ohlbaum associates, Strategy Advisers in the Media, Entertainment & Sports sectors. The results were taken from a total sample group of 5,300 people who were on the free 30 day trial. The survey was commissioned by The Times newspaper.

No one knows the true figures as ITV hasn't said, but they expect BritBox UK will remain in the net investment phase for a number of years, which in simple language means lose money. So its pretty much following the pattern of all SVoD service launches by a) refusing to release subscriber numbers, b) lose money in its first few years (expected to be 4-5), c) will review the situation after 4 years.

But personally all the above doesn't really concern me. The quality, solidity and reliability of the app DOES. Its poor across all platforms as it stands at the moment.

the survey was conducted by Oliver & Ohlbaum associates, Strategy Advisers in the Media, Entertainment & Sports sectors. The results were taken from a total sample group of 5,300 people who were on the free 30 trial. The survey was commissioned by The Times newspaper.